UK esports organisation Excel Esports has spoken publicly about rumours that some of its BT Excel academy players (pictured) declined to play in the LEC when called up.
Specifically, jungler Markoon and support player Advienne, who play for BT Excel in the NLC and recently reached the EU Masters finals.
Kieran-Holmes Darby, chief gaming officer and one of the co-founders of Excel, also addressed the fact that the org tried to sub out two players – Czekolad and Tore – towards the end of the Spring 2021 LEC Season, but failed. One player flew home but had to return again when Excel realised it wasn’t actually possible to sub them out.
“The players didn’t refuse to play in the LEC, but there was some hesitation and some of that was around how quickly said promotion would happen as they feel they would want more scrim time and practice before being promoted.”
Speaking to Dot Esports’ Pablo Suárez in this article, Kieran said of academy players being ‘hesitant’ to join the LEC team: “The players didn’t refuse to play in the LEC, but there was some hesitation and some of that was around how quickly said promotion would happen as they feel they would want more scrim time and practice before being promoted.
“[BT Excel has an] awesome and a better setup than some LEC teams have. We can’t just say ‘you are promoted’ [to the BT Excel players], we have to work with them to make sure they are ready when the opportunity presents itself.”
On the aforementioned situation involving former mid-laner Czekolad and support player Tore, Kieran explained: “We had the information we were given by Riot regarding rules about roster swaps. Our management interpreted that information wrongly, and that’s on us. We have to hold our hands up. We made a mistake and we won’t ever make that same mistake again.”
Esports News UK previously wrote that some of the BT Excel players have shown they are good enough to step up to the LEC level.
The LEC Summer 2021 Season kicks off tomorrow (Friday June 11th) from 5pm BST on lolesports.com and the LEC Twitch channel.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
